Get a fresh look at the world of IBM i and i5/OS security in this comprehensive book by one of the industry s leading authorities on security. Security consultant Carol Woodbury takes her extensive experience designing and implementing security on IBM systems and makes it relevant for today s world. Throughout the book, she discusses issues that organizations need to address for compliance requirements, providing best practices as well as alternatives and options for compensating controls when best practices cannot be applied. Building on the foundation laid by the popular Experts Guide to OS/400 & i5/OS Security, this edition features completely updated information throughout. New chapters address compliance requirements for IBM i, implementing role-based access (RBAC), implementing object-level security, and creating a security incident response plan. Carol Woodbury s methodology for implementing object-level security is described in detail. Topics include determining a system s current settings, default access requirements, process access, and the rollout of new application security models. The book presents this information in a clear and informative way that lets even non-security professionals understand and apply the concepts. This book is a must-read for any auditor, system administrator, security officer, or compliance officer who works with IBM i or i5/OS.

About the Author
Carol Woodbury is president of SkyView Partners, Inc., a firm she co-founded in 2002 that specializes in security policy compliance software and remediation services. Carol has worked in the field of security since 1990. She worked for IBM in Rochester, Minnesota, for 16 years, the last 10 of which were spent as team leader of the OS/400 security development team and chief engineering manager for AS/400 security. Carol is an award-winning speaker who speaks around the world on the topic of security. She is also an award-winning writer and serves as a technical expert on security topics for numerous publications

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Kisco Information Systems(www.kisco.com) today announced the release of a new interface to the Twittersocial networking service. SNDTWEET runs on the IBM System i and can beused to post messages through Twitter.

Twitter can appear to be an unusual application for the IBM System i community.When you log in to create your Twitter account, the objective presented to you isan emphasis on “What Are You Doing?”, a questionable business need. If,however, you think of Twitter as an SMS service (Short Message Service), aconcept that has been around for a much longer period of time, then you canstart to see through the hype to find that this can be used for very legitimatepurposes in your System i shop. A Twitter post is called a "Tweet" and is acharacter based message with a limit of 140 characters. Twitter has the ability toshare event information immediately with multiple users, connecting to them ontheir PCs, cell phones or PDAs.

Some good uses that Kisco recommends for Twitter include:

• System Monitoring - You can add the SNDTWEET to your CL programs tosend out notifications when the program is done or when error situationsare encountered.

• Message Monitoring - You can set up a program to monitor your systemoperator message queue. If a message is sent that requires a response,your monitoring program can react by sending a Tweet to put yourfollowing users on notice that there is a problem.

• User Tweets - Twitter can be used to enhance communication betweenteam members on a development project, or any other project for thatmatter. If your development team are located in physically different places,Twitter can help improve the level of communication between teammembers. When one person gets something done or identifies an issue, itcan be immediately shared with all team members.

• File Monitoring - You may have a situation where you want to “watch” fileupdate activity for a critical file or for a file that should not normally beupdated. You could implement a file trigger program for the watched fileand then have that trigger program submit a Tweet when update activity(or delete activity, etc) takes place.

• Company Promotions - many companies are finding that Twitter is a greatway to keep customers and potential customers on board with currentevents. With a simple CL program, you could have your marketing (orother) folks maintain a database of future Tweets to be sent and havethem go out on a regular schedule.

• Personal Tweets - The SNDTWEET command can be used for any Twitteraccount. All you need to supply is your Twitter ID and password and youcan send a Tweet for any account.

SNDTWEET, is priced at $295.00 for a single partition installation on any IBMSystem i computer including Power Systems, i5, iSeries and AS400. Forcompanies with several systems, Kisco offers multiple-license discounts. AnLPAR price of $495.00 lets you install SNDTWEET in multiple partitions for asingle price.. Kisco Information Systems offers a free 30-day evaluation of theproduct that can be downloaded with complete software documentation in PDFformat from http://www.kisco.com/sndtweet. To obtain a free evaluation on CDcall Kisco at (518) 897-5002 or e-mail sales@kisco.com.